The campaign against South Australian Labor treasurer Kevin Foley's latest budget is gathering strength.
The second rally protesting against the wide-ranging budget cuts 鈥 particularly to the public sector 鈥 organised by SA Unions, attracted up to 10,000 people on 14 October. Members of the Legislative Assembly were invited to speak, including independents, the Liberal Party and Family First. The campaign has called on the Upper House MPs to block the legislation.
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About 50 people attended politics in the pub at the Queensberry hotel on October 12, to discuss the upcoming November 27 Victorian elections.
Greens candidate for Melbourne, Brian Walters, spoke about the Victorian ALP government鈥檚 record. He said the contract for the proposed desalination plant is secret, but the cost is likely to be about $18 billion.
The plant will use huge amounts of electricity and add to greenhouse pollution.
Immigration minister Chris Bowen visited East Timor on October 11 to push Australia鈥檚 offshore detention centre plan.
He also visited Indonesia and Malaysia over October 12-14. Bowen鈥檚 purpose was to enforce 鈥渟trong cooperation with regional neighbours鈥 on Australia鈥檚 border control.
He said he wanted East Timor to 鈥減lay a role鈥 by allowing the Australian government to build a refugee detention centre there.
This year is the 15th anniversary of the Nargar Kovil school massacre in Tamil Eelam, the Tamil area of Sri Lanka. On September 22, 1995, the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) bombed Nargar Kovil Maha Vidyalayam schoolyard, which was crammed with 750 children on their lunch break. Reports of the number of children killed vary from 26 to 70. Twelve of the children killed were six or seven years old. One hundred and fifty were injured, including 40 seriously. Twenty-two children had their limbs amputated. Ten of the amputees were under 12.
In the following article Margarita Windisch explains why she is running as Socialist Alliance candidate for Footscray in the November 27 Victorian election. Socialist Alliance鈥檚 other candidates are Mitch Cherry for Bellarine, Trent Hawkins for Brunswick and Ron Guy for Melton.
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I moved to Australia from Austria in the late 鈥80s and currently teach welfare work at Victoria University TAFE in Footscray. There I have had firsthand experience of the Brumby government鈥檚 misguided 鈥渟kills reform鈥 agenda for the sector.
In early September, two transsexual men lost an appeal in Western Australia鈥檚 Supreme Court to be legally recognised as men. The negative ruling has consequences for other transsexual and transgender cases. The men are considering appealing to a higher body.
Gina Wilson, spokesperson for Organisation Intersex Internationale (OIS), told 91自拍论坛 Weekly: 鈥淭he two appellants underwent top surgery [mastectomies] and were on hormone replacement therapy 鈥 testosterone. They were living as men and accepted as men by society and friends.
What鈥檚 on your iPod? Personally I have an eclectic mix 鈥 from hippyesque acoustic folk through to American 鈥済angsta鈥 rap and random electronic post-modern wankery you'll only hear on Triple J.
Musically, we all enjoy different stuff. Most readers of 91自拍论坛 Weekly would have broadly similar political beliefs, so why the difference? Why don鈥檛 people who converge politically also enjoy similar cultural tastes?
Banning burqa not progressive
Dave Bell is welcome to his opinion about the 鈥渋diocy鈥 of wearing the burqa (GLW #856). Since he dislikes it so much, I suggest he refrains from wearing one.
Yet his demand that socialists line up with the call from Christian fundamentalist politicians in Australia to ban the burqa is wrong, dangerous and is not feminist.
Gippsland unions and community organisations took part in the fourth in a series of 鈥渢ransition jobs seminars鈥. The seminar took place on October 13 under the auspices of the Gippsland Trades and Labour Council (GTLC) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
It dealt with the region鈥檚 current skills base in brown-coal mining, dairy and other industries, and the sort of training needed to skill workers for environmentally sustainable production.
When US director Danny Schechter鈥檚 2006 film In Debt We Trust predicted a huge financial crisis was coming, he was laughed at. It turned out he was right.
His latest film, Plunder: The Crime of Our Time shows how the crisis was created by Wall Street bankers breaking the law to manipulate the markets 鈥 and suggests a bigger crisis is on the way.
Pip Hinman has been pre-selected to run for the Socialist Alliance in the NSW seat of Marrickville in the March state elections. She is an activist journalist and stood in the seat in 2007. Hinman was active in the pro-choice movement in Sydney and Brisbane in the 1980s and 1990s. Below, she responds to the October 14 not guilty verdict in the trial of the Cairns couple charged under Queensland鈥檚 abortion laws. * * * The not guilty finding of the young Cairns couple should be the impetus for the NSW government to remove abortion from the NSW Crimes Act of 1900.
Jess Moore, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Cunningham, on the NSW South Coast, speaks about the climate change challenge.
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